"Enter the Dragon" may not be a perfect movie in the ultimate scheme of things, but it has become legendary because it was Bruce Lee's last completed film, and it is also a form of testament.

Lee's shocking death, at the age of 32, occurred before the movie was released in 1973.

Movies may become classics for many reasons, only one of which is film craftsmanship. Another is that they preserve the spirit of a great star, which is the case with "Enter the Dragon." It begins a revival presentation today at the Roxie.

Before the opening credits, in a restored scene not included in earlier releases, Lee gives a lesson in martial arts to a novice, and the words are not the scriptwriter's. They are Lee's. The new Warner Bros. DVD of "Enter the Dragon," also just released in a 25th anniversary edition, contains an interview in which he briefly expresses his philosophy of combat. It is the same as the lesson in the film.

"When the opponent expands," Lee says, "I contract, and when he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, I do not hit," he says, showing his fist, "it hits all by itself."

"Enter the Dragon" goes far beyond the philosophical, of course. Its best sequences, and the only real reason for seeing it again, involve Lee's phenomenal physical and emotional presence.

In action, Lee's prancing walk, bared teeth and sucked-in breath, his wicked crotch kicks and strobe- fast blows with hands and feet are accompanied by eerie little vocalizations, yelps and growls, and a megawatt glare.

But the most surprising moment comes at a point when Lee is forced to kill, and what sticks with the viewer is not his body in action but an extraordinary slow-motion shot of the emotion playing across his face.

At another point, Lee tastes the blood from his own wounds. We also see him in repose, when he avoids an unnecessary fight (with a sleazy, unworthy opponent).

The movie is one of those lurid '70s spectacles in the tradition of a James Bond thriller. It has an extravagant villain and involves international skullduggery at a martial-arts tournament on an island fortress near Hong Kong. (Lee, who was born in San Francisco but grew up in Hong Kong, speaks with a beautiful Hong Kong English accent.)

The villain, Han (Shih Kien), is a "renegade monk," as the movie has it, from the Shaolin Temple who now runs an international drugs and prostitution ring. Lee (that's his character's name, too) is the temple's leading martial-arts practitioner and is recruited by an international intelligence agency to stop Han.

While the James Bond ambience is clearly present, and there is some of that sex play, none of it involves Lee, who is nothing if not spiritually focused. Instead, John Saxon stands in for the playboy adventurer type, and there is an African American competitor played by karate champion Jim Kelly. Also reflecting the era in which the film was made, Kelly is presented as a Black Power figure.

There are several tournament fights, a cat-burglar sequence in which Lee is so charismatic that he steals a scene from a snake, and the climactic hall-of-mirrors showdown with Han, when Lee stealthily approaches, his advancing image reflected again and again across the screen.

The Roxie's new print, while pristine, is not as well color-corrected as the one issued on DVD. Still, it is a rare pleasure to see "Enter the Dragon" projected on a theater screen.

No one could overstate the degree of Lee's international star power and influence. He honorably held his place in a line of great action stars that goes all the way back to Douglas Fairbanks.